Politics of Love

An Excerpt from the forthcoming edition of the bestselling book The Mystery of Love by Dr. Marc Gafni

Our community, our polis, has lost its soul. Polis is the word for city. Metro-polis means the mother city. This in Christendom meant the cathedral city where the Archbishop anchored the spirit for the people. Politics needs to be rooted in soul. Because tragically the marriage of soul and politics was corrupt for most of the 1700 years of papal power – we have needed to fully separate church and state. Yet even while insisting on the legal separation of organized religion from state power, we must seek to re-integrate soul into politics.

Said simply, we must seek a politics of love. We cannot be lovers if we live in a world where 35,000 people* die every day of hunger or hunger related diseases. We must realize that for all their glory – both politics and science have failed us. They have certainly not produced the best of all possible worlds.

Instead of our world being guided by lovers, as Naomi Klein documents in her important work No Logo, it is largely driven by a small group of multinational corporations. Most corporations are, in the final analysis, run by men and women who have internalized a psychology of fear. The corporations intentionally decide to play off human fear and insecurity rather than speak to human generosity and goodness. The underlying dynamic driving the corporate chieftains is the terror of being vulnerable to hurt. The way to overcome vulnerability is to accumulate as much power as possible. Power means “buying power”. This is what allows those driven by fear to feel protected from the vagaries of life. Moreover buying power provides an illusion of value. Everyone wants their lives to matter. Not being sure how to achieve such a life, many people fall back on monetary valuation to give their lives worth.

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